Wagner Opera Quotes

#1. There isn't often anything in Wagner opera that one would call by such a violent name as acting.

Mark Twain

#2. A soccer game is a Wagner opera. The narrative sets up, the tension builds, the music ebbs and flows, the strings, the horns, more tension, and suddenly a moment of pure bliss, trumpet-tongued Gabriel sings, and gods descend from Olympus to dance - this peak of ecstasy.

Rabih Alameddine

#3. My greatest experiences in the theatre and the most religious experiences in my life - of which going to the opera is one for me - have been with the Romantic composers' repertoire: it's Wagner, it's Strauss, Verdi, Puccini. That era gets me every time.

Rufus Wainwright

#4. An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied.

Arnold H. Glasow

#5. I never listen to music when I am writing. It would be impossible. I listen to Bach in the mornings, mostly choral music; also some Handel, mostly songs and arias; I like Schubert's and Beethoven's chamber music and Sibelius' symphonies; for opera, I listen to Mozart and in recent years Wagner.

Colm Toibin

#6. And my singing, I don't think I could sing Wagner or opera, but I could probably carry a tune. I was in a musical once, but it was never performed.

Wallace Shawn

#7. I don't think I was ever particularly mean. I can certainly think of some idiotic exchanges I've had. I was accused of destroying pop music, like Wagner destroyed opera - a guy in Germany started ranting that at me.

Elvis Costello

#8. I'm not going to hide that I want to get to know who you are now. I'm also not going to hide the fact that I think you're still the classiest, most fucking beautiful woman I've ever seen, or the fact that I remember the taste of you and it still makes me hard.

Samantha Young

#9. Who we are and what we do it is fundamentally a function of what we remember.

Joshua Foer

#10. For many things are not as they appear. Discipline must come from trust and confidence.

Ernest Hemingway,

#11. I don't much like opera, either. Especially Wagner. There's something about Wagner that's just too piss-German, too fucking Bavarian for a Prussian like me. I like my music to be every bit as vulgar as I am myself. I like a bit of innuendo and stocking-top when a woman's singing a song.

Philip Kerr

#12. One can't judge Wagner's opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don't intend to hear it a second time.

Gioachino Rossini

#13. Never be grandiloquent when you want to drive home a searching truth. Don't whip with a switch that has the leaves on, if you want it to tingle.

Henry Ward Beecher

#14. My stepfather was quite into opera, but he'd play it when he was in a bad mood, so you'd hear this boom through the floor, Wagner, and you'd feel nervous.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

#15. I love Italian opera - it's so reckless. Damn Wagner, and his bellowings at Fate and death. Damn Debussy, and his averted face. I like the Italians who run all on impulse, and don't care about their immortal souls, and don't worry about the ultimate.

D.H. Lawrence

#16. Wagner thought Rossini unserious; Rossini thought Wagner 'lacked sun'. Wagner also became the butt of a phrase Rossini had used down the years to describe musicians about whom he had certain reservations - "He has some beautiful moments but some bad quarters of an hour!

Richard Osborne

#17. He looked at her rather as a man looks at a problem that he would very much prefer to do without. She supposed it was a distinction of a sort to be a harassment to a king.

Robin McKinley

#18. I am so proud of you, Flame," she whispered, and I felt my chest get tight again. "Just when I believe I could not love you even more, you go and prove me wrong." "I love you too," I said and kissed her head.

Tillie Cole

#19. I'd rather waltz than just walk through the forest
The trees keep the tempo and they sway in time
Quartet of crickets chime in for the chorus
If I were to pluck on your heartstrings, would you strum on mine?

Owl City

#20. I maintain that Western popular culture at its best is worthy of respect and should be cherished as much as the operas of Wagner.

Ibn Warraq

#21. My own experience, though, as a business executive and as a governor, tells me that businesses are interested in a lot more than a low tax rate when they decide where to locate.

Jack Markell

#22. So, he eagerly drove from Basel to Bayreuth before the festival began to watch the last rehearsals of The Ring Cycle. As he watched, it hit him like Odin's bowel movement: the opera was shit.

Dylan Callens

#23. And the real thing can kill you whether you believe in it or not.

R.A. Salvatore

#24. Wagner used to read the libretti of his operas to his friends; I am glad I was not there.

Ralph Vaughan Williams

#25. I am under no illusion that I will ever be the greatest opera composer in the world, with Wagner and Verdi and Strauss before me. I think my work could fit very nicely into musicals, though.

Rufus Wainwright

#26. I am madness maddened when it comes to books, writers, and the great granary silos where their wits are stored.

Ray Bradbury

#27. I can see Richard Wagner standing at the gates of heaven. "You have to let me in," he says. "I wrote Parsifal. It has to do with the Grail, Christ, suffering, pity and healing. Right?" And they answer, "Well, we read it and it makes no sense." SLAM.

Philip K. Dick

#28. How you do money is how you do life.

Orna Ross

#29. My goal is: I'm not trying to be snobby, but my clothes are not for everyone, not for every Hollywood celebrity. There is a designer for everyone, and a celebrity for every designer.

Prabal Gurung

#30. The error in the art-genre of Opera consists herein: a Means of expression (Music) has been made the end, while the End of expression (the Drama) has been made a means.

Richard Wagner